A Sunday in Toronto may not be as sleepy as it once was, but as The Night Shift discovered yesterday evening, we're still a long way from renaming it the Day of Restless.
No, it wasn’t exactly a quiet weekend in Toronto, but it was one of amusing contrasts. Nothing tells you things are changing quite like when a furniture store opens up in the spot where you saw your first battle of the bands (i.e., shitty music by teens, for teens). But, apparently, that was the big to-do on Friday night, when everyone with a condo lease deigned to attend the opening of CB2 where the purple Big Bop used to stand, at the corner of Queen and Bathurst. And on Saturday night, the UJA Federation of Toronto hosted TOgether 2012 at the Royal Ontario Museum, a party-cum-fundraiser that sought to transport people back to “the golden era of hip hop.” It’s another one of those wow-this-is-actually-happening moments when find out your childhood favourites have gone decidedly, uh, corporate. While our rock-music progeny mourned the loss of a venue to terrorize, the cool kids were bouncing along to classics by Young MC, Naughty by Nature and Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock. It’s inevitable, of course, that the “nouveau bourgeoisie,” or at least its succeeding members (myself included, probably), would foam at the mouth for both a cleaned-up showroom for affordable/stylish vases and cleaned-up versions of once revolutionary rap acts.
Yeah, it really did feel like a pair of unremarkable weekend nights (except for these things, of course), the kind whose only purpose is to remind you that: no, you’re not young anymore; yes, people will attend the opening of an envelope if Twitter says everyone else is doing it; and nostalgia can trick artists into playing a show just about anywhere, for just about anything. And so Sunday, in all its non-glory, seemed like the best night to avoid all this noise.
In Slavic languages, the word “Sunday” translates into “no work”; in Christian traditions, it is a Day of Rest. In Israel, and in Muslim regions, it’s business as usual. It’s not a day with the best reputation (see: “Sunday Blood Sunday”/Black Sunday), and it can easily double as a synonym for Catholic guilt. In 1906, the Lord’s Day Act—spearheaded by a very Protestant Canadian government—was passed banning all business activity on this day, a cause undertaken in 1903 after Hamilton began allowing streetcars to operate on Sundays. The law prohibited “sport, entertainment and almost all commerce on Sundays, although it permitted provincial governments to make exceptions.” (Imagine, just imagine, what that would have meant for your Super Bowl party.)
In 1985, a Calgary case challenged this law as unconstitutional (and plain stupid), and it was phased out for infringing on the Charter of Rights. But, still, nothing happened on Sundays in Toronto for a long time (mostly because the Retail Business Holidays Act still forbade Sunday shopping in Ontario), and much of that has influenced social perceptions, ingrained in our cultural modus operandi. However, with the Rae government amending the RBHA in 1992, malls like the Eaton Centre began opening on Sunday and pretty much every other buy-it-and-sell-it operation began to follow suit. And yet some financial institutions only began operating on Sunday like, what, a year ago? There’s still a long way to go. Sunday night, then, is approached with the same enthusiasm as its morning: nothing to do, nowhere to go—at least not quickly. It’s just that: a day of nothing, or complete arbitrariness. It’s the only day that’s both so, so prized and cherished, but also utterly wasted.
So I resolved to do something both Sunday-like and decidedly non-Sunday-like, also known as “trying to go out.” Of course, it’s not hard to do the quintessential Toronto thing during the day: brunch at X or Y, or dinner at Z. Cruise the St. Lawrence Antique Market for shit you don’t need. Go to a movie (or, even better, Silent Sundays at the Revue). Read the New York Times over said brunch. Tweet about reading the Times like it makes you a superstar, or Instagram your mimosa. Facebook our most inherent inanity live from bed (“totes hungover” or “someone bring me coffeeee”). Clean, or at least talk about cleaning. Catch up on Revenge, or return those 10 emails from people who didn’t matter all week. (I, for one, tried a Caesar for the first time at The Ace, a drink that you all seem to love for some reason, and is probably more Canadian than I am, invented in that daring old Calgary in 1969. The verdict: would it be the same without the spice?) In the end, we might as well just stop resisting altogether and shop at CB2. Yet, we’ll probably still feel “so bored.”
But the seventh night in Toronto can be akin to those hours you find yourself trying to fall asleep, but just can’t. It’s busy, but subtle. It’s dizzying, but sobering. Every brain cell wants shut down, but the energy keeps your pupils dilated, and the complete silence of being alone in a dark room means your thoughts only want to get louder. The city is sort of like that.
So is there anything fun to do on a Sunday night? I consulted all the papers, and all the online guides, texted a dozen people. To kill time, I watched 20 minutes of The Holy Mountain because it felt appropriate until I realized it would be no substitute for church and I would probably need to be less sober—two things that aren’t mutually exclusive, by the way. (Waiting to go out on Sunday night feels unnatural.) Of course, I’ve done things on Sunday before: Dancing to the oldies at Zipper’s on Carlton in the Church-Wells village is always fun, and full of older dudes who have no attitude or no patience for anything other than plaid. There’s that one night I did karaoke. And after May, before October, you don’t have to think twice about what to do or where to go. “Toronto has to sleep,” said a bartender friend to me. “We’re not Montreal, we need to get up and work in the morning.” (Even the service industry celebrates their weekend victories during Monday “industry” nights.) There are very few Sunday-night parties that attract major crowds, and while I’m not above going to Comfort Zone or after-hours, that’s a different story for a different night.
Along College, the streetcars are covered in colourful characters, with big fur hats and cheetah-print jackets, or renaissance hipsters with that eye-bleeding look of baseball bomber jackets and super skinny jeans with vintage Air Jordans. (Yawn.) Ghost, Blood Ceremony and Ancient VVisdom are playing at the Mod Club, and it’s an all-ages show, so there are those kids, too. The adjacent Crawford, Little Italy’s newest you’ll-love-it-here spot, houses a single soul: the bartender. Down at 751 on Queen West, I heard about this Bass of Hearts Sunday party, with guest DJ Hydee. I’ve known 751 to attract the young and pretty, and who cares less about Monday mornings than a post-secondary student? The place is dead, but the music is an interesting-enough blend of chillwave/psychedelic-something/drumstep/dubstep/any other fusion genre I’m probably still not getting right. Let’s just say there was a Lana Del Rey remix of “Blue Jeans,” okay? In the corner, a pair of guys is chatting seriously about bisexuality as its own, valid sexual orientation. The bartender pours shots of red wine.
Across the street, at Czehoski’s, The Upside Trio is playing a modest set by candlelight. Now this… this is perfect. Date night? Screw Friday and Saturday and all those other people that crowd your space and make your conversation awkward and uncomfortable—this is the night to do it. Down a little further, at Squirly’s, take your idea of low-key and laid back, and divide that in half. There are two friends celebrating their birthday by drinking aimlessly, and coolly, at the bar; one lives in Ottawa and came in just for this occasion. They picked out each other’s outfits, and finish each other’s sentences. At midnight, they hug and kiss and cheer to another year together. I don’t need to travel the city to know that people will still find rhyme or reason to drink, and do it with vigour on any night of the week. I’d find much of the same anywhere else.
On Sunday, you can go out, and you hope for the best. (And really, isn’t that true of waking up on a Monday morning?) You hear every voice in the distance, every step on a sewer grate. No matter how long you’ve lived in the city, and despite the fact that you’ve been mugged once and still lived, every shadow looks like it will cut you. I’ve seen our streets full of life, full of cause and effect, full of power and hysteria, full of anger and redemption. But I’ve never seen them quiet. If there were a real nocturnal Toronto, in its most unblemished or unadorned form, this would be it.
